Medieval Stasis, a rant.

[Amrasil207]

Alright.

Why is it a staple to keep things so stagnant?

Why is the Elves keep being either a tree hugger twat or a privileged prick with a brain of the supposedly superior and enlightened one but couldn't invent something to save themselves other than a bigger bow or kissed their tree so hard it sprouted pointy stakes!?

What is with the Dwarves that oh so mighty and great in mining and forging and drinking and being generally greedy SHORT gremlins but couldn't go further into systematic industrial revolution!?

Why are human with oh so much creativity and yes oh so chosen race could not muster the idea that throwing a rock faster is better in the long run than trying to best whatever is thrown at them with sheer numbers!?

Why is everything medieval, why is horse charge this arrow volley that but no one ever thought how cool would a line of musket would look like!? Good god look at the Tercios and tell me how is that not cool!? God imagine how cool would it be to see a line of pikes colliding with one another while Dragoons and Lancers outmaneuvering each others?!

The point is... PLEASE GIB THE RENAISSANCE AND ENLIGHTENMENT AGE A CHANCE!

Anyway thank you for wasting your time, bye. :)

P.S: Yes, I'm mentally ill at the moment. :)))))

 

[BearlyAlive]

Short answer: Religion
Less short answer: Lazy writing

Depends on a case-by-case scenario though. Most of the time it has to do with the power dynamics in the story, you don't want 40k dwarfs fighting unga-bunga sticks unless it's a power trip story, after all.

Humans are overrated, tho. Pretty much just monkeys on charisma build.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

Humans are overrated, tho. Pretty much just monkeys on charisma build.

You mean naked mole-rat-monkeys?

 

[Hans.Trondheim]

Alright.

Why is it a staple to keep things so stagnant?

Why is the Elves keep being either a tree hugger twat or a privileged prick with a brain of the supposedly superior and enlightened one but couldn't invent something to save themselves other than a bigger bow or kissed their tree so hard it sprouted pointy stakes!?

My novel is not like that, but yeah, my elves are nature-attuned.

What is with the Dwarves that oh so mighty and great in mining and forging and drinking and being generally greedy SHORT gremlins but couldn't go further into systematic industrial revolution!?

My dwarves are living in modernity, powered by steam engines and magic batteries.

Why are human with oh so much creativity and yes oh so chosen race could not muster the idea that throwing a rock faster is better in the long run than trying to best whatever is thrown at them with sheer numbers!?

Humans are creative?

Any case, my humans adopted the musket and bolt-action rifles in the course of the story.

Why is everything medieval, why is horse charge this arrow volley that but no one ever thought how cool would a line of musket would look like!?

My novel developed from swords to muskets to bolt-action rifles.

Good god look at the Tercios and tell me how is that not cool!? God imagine how cool would it be to see a line of pikes colliding with one another while Dragoons and Lancers outmaneuvering each others?!

They also got phalanx, testudo, line infantry tactics, flanking maneuvers and hammer and anvil, airborne and amphibious landings. Creeping bombardment, medevac, stormtrooper tactics, and Carpet bombing too.

Oh yeah, my isekai novel also has dogfights, and airships bombing each other, and tanks. And makeshift 'aircraft' carriers.

The point is... PLEASE GIB THE RENAISSANCE AND ENLIGHTENMENT AGE A CHANCE!

I went past Renaissance, and enlightenment. By my final arc they were in the age of modernity.

Anyway thank you for wasting your time, bye. :)

P.S: Yes, I'm mentally ill at the moment. :)))))

Wish you well.

 

[owotrucked]

real reason: authors like this staple

worldbuilding pretext for elf cavemen:
Imagine you're a hardcore eco friendly elf and you want to develop technology.
Technological transformation of raw materials often need energy. So you request a tree to fuel your endeavor, but the tree god says no. You can only take some twigs that fall off from living trees, but you can never cut a tree.
You want to use coal instead? They're the dead remains of ancestral trees, so it's the equivalent of grave robbing
Well fuck then, you decide to go with renewable: so the max you can build is watermill and windmill (if you're allowed to get lumber). But they are fixed facillity, while a big factor of development and urbanization is using fuel to power farming tools (displacing labor from farms to cities for jobs) and vehicles (increasing the range of commute allows facilities and markets to grow bigger in one spot). As knowledge spread at a faster rate than when everyone were stuck in their small village, science grows richer, but that'll never happen to small elf settlements.
Elves can't even put roads or invent the wheel because of their damn forest and uneven raw terrain.

worldbuilding pretext for short kings being miners:
Watch a documentary on cobalt miners working in extremely narrow and small tunnels and you understand the thought process of the guy who decided that dwarves are good at mining

 

[Hans.Trondheim]

real reason: authors like this staple

worldbuilding pretext for elf cavemen:
Imagine you're a hardcore eco friendly elf and you want to develop technology.
Technological transformation of raw materials often need energy. So you request a tree to fuel your endeavor, but the tree god says no. You can only take some twigs that fall off from living trees, but you can never cut a tree.
You want to use coal instead? They're the dead remains of ancestral trees, so it's the equivalent of grave robbing
Well fuck then, you decide to go with renewable: so the max you can build is watermill and windmill (if you're allowed to get lumber). But they are fixed facillity, while a big factor of development and urbanization is using fuel to power farming tools (displacing labor from farms to cities for jobs) and vehicles (increasing the range of commute allows facilities and markets to grow bigger in one spot). As knowledge spread at a faster rate than when everyone were stuck in their small village, science grows richer, but that'll never happen to small elf settlements.
Elves can't even put roads or invent the wheel because of their damn forest and uneven raw terrain.

worldbuilding pretext for short kings being miners:
Watch a documentary on cobalt miners working in extremely narrow and small tunnels and you understand the thought process of the guy who decided that dwarves are good at mining

Addendum: there's something charming about medieval rustic settings.

 

[ArlindoFrancisco]

Alright.

Why is it a staple to keep things so stagnant?

Why is the Elves keep being either a tree hugger twat or a privileged prick with a brain of the supposedly superior and enlightened one but couldn't invent something to save themselves other than a bigger bow or kissed their tree so hard it sprouted pointy stakes!?

What is with the Dwarves that oh so mighty and great in mining and forging and drinking and being generally greedy SHORT gremlins but couldn't go further into systematic industrial revolution!?

Why are human with oh so much creativity and yes oh so chosen race could not muster the idea that throwing a rock faster is better in the long run than trying to best whatever is thrown at them with sheer numbers!?

Why is everything medieval, why is horse charge this arrow volley that but no one ever thought how cool would a line of musket would look like!? Good god look at the Tercios and tell me how is that not cool!? God imagine how cool would it be to see a line of pikes colliding with one another while Dragoons and Lancers outmaneuvering each others?!

The point is... PLEASE GIB THE RENAISSANCE AND ENLIGHTENMENT AGE A CHANCE!

Anyway thank you for wasting your time, bye. :)

P.S: Yes, I'm mentally ill at the moment. :)))))

Elves is pure culture/tradition, nothing really that deep.

Dwarves is pure culture/tradition, nothing really that deep.

The two have long live spams so they don't really care much about change.

Humans have short lifespans so their culture changes with time more easily and because they breed a lot, the young have a larger population. Even if they respect the elders, when is their time to shine? They want to leave a mark on the world because of the lifespan is shorter, That is why i think technologically superior Dwarves are a specific moment in any lore, humans are bound to supass them.

Everything is medieval because the setting, people like that, is a moment in time that they chose to show; magic has it's problems because it kind of stops a lot of progress in ways, so it makes sense to a point. Put simply, you can go to the Renaissance or Enlightenment age in a fantasy spin but it will be a majority human with some other races in the mix here and there. but a lot of people don't like to read it.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

One of the coolest settings I've seen in print (and it did have a few novels based there) was "Bloodshadows" - a setting developed for West End Games Masterbook line.
It presumed that it took about twice as long for a fantasy society to evolve, so after about 500 years the technology was roughly 1920s level - but automobiles are powered by elementals, not combustion engines, electricity is produced by spirits in slave labor conditions, trapped in spheres and forced to produce energy, etc. The culture is pretty much prohibition era, and the cities are "beacons of (grimy) light" in an otherwise dark world, as there are things in the wilderness that...well, some were blatantly inspired by pulp horror authors like H. P. Lovecraft and Robert Bloch. It did have most of the standard fantasy races, but more ... well, noir-ish versions.

 

[Puji-Maki]

Because that's the norm. It's hard to break the stereotype.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

The point is... PLEASE GIB THE RENAISSANCE AND ENLIGHTENMENT AGE A CHANCE!

Why won't you do it yourself?

 

[Amrasil207]

Why won't you do it yourself?

In the works, i'm stuck! I got like uh... 10 chapters? It is templated into those summoning nation stuff and i'm still in world building phase. There is another one, but I'm having a hard time choosing the plot.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

In the works, i'm stuck! I got like uh... 10 chapters? It is templated into those summoning nation stuff and i'm still in world building phase. There is another one, but I'm having a hard time choosing the plot.

It's a cool idea, and I would be happy to see you succeeding with it. Good luck with your writing!

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

Why is everything medieval, why is horse charge this arrow volley that but no one ever thought how cool would a line of musket would look like!? Good god look at the Tercios and tell me how is that not cool!? God imagine how cool would it be to see a line of pikes colliding with one another while Dragoons and Lancers outmaneuvering each others?!

The description feels ... ahistorical. Many different periods clashing.

As for the rest, it would be an error to assume that technological progress is naturally inevitable.

 

[cabbag3]

As for the rest, it would be an error to assume that technological progress is naturally inevitable.

I read a reddit discussion about the same topic once and many people thought the same, that there would be some kind of bias which might result in discrepancies if you're looking at these elves, dwarves, demons, etc. from the human/mortal lenses.

And I also like to think that just because you can't see the usual human technological progress in other races/creatures, doesn't mean they don't have any, you just can't see them in the usual "human" way.

In the works, i'm stuck! I got like uh... 10 chapters? It is templated into those summoning nation stuff and i'm still in world building phase. There is another one, but I'm having a hard time choosing the plot.

Good luck

 

[Tegeli]

Early modern period is by far my favourite historical period, and I wouldn't mind more fantasy taking deliberate inspiration from it. Fortunately, these days its somewhat possible to find all sorts of stories, though I seem to end going for "plain" history books when the I get the itch for gunpowder empires and nascent globalisation.

 

[Amrasil207]

The description feels ... ahistorical. Many different periods clashing.

As for the rest, it would be an error to assume that technological progress is naturally inevitable.

Oh yeah, I should have used Cuirassier or Arquebusier against pike but honestly I just wanna drive the point home... More Knights with (early) Guns plez.

 

[JHarp]

Why is it a staple to keep things so stagnant?

Why is the Elves keep being either a tree hugger twat or a privileged prick with a brain of the supposedly superior and enlightened one but couldn't invent something to save themselves other than a bigger bow or kissed their tree so hard it sprouted pointy stakes!?

What is with the Dwarves that oh so mighty and great in mining and forging and drinking and being generally greedy SHORT gremlins but couldn't go further into systematic industrial revolution!?

Why are human with oh so much creativity and yes oh so chosen race could not muster the idea that throwing a rock faster is better in the long run than trying to best whatever is thrown at them with sheer numbers!?

Why is everything medieval, why is horse charge this arrow volley that but no one ever thought how cool would a line of musket would look like!? Good god look at the Tercios and tell me how is that not cool!? God imagine how cool would it be to see a line of pikes colliding with one another while Dragoons and Lancers outmaneuvering each others?!

Spoiler: Magic supersedes technology in ease of access and adds in complexity at the detriment of other resources and factors.

In a majority of settings with elves and dwarves, the implication is magic, which generally bypasses rules of nature, physics or thermodynamics. This means there is minimal reliance on complex machinery when skills, professions or magic can fill in for what is by result, a complicated task. Need something heated, clean water, flat land or breaking up rocks? Magic solves it. Spears and their equals are pretty much for untrained foot soldiers, meaning they aren't even the focus half the time in novels to begin with, anyone of importance can afford their own personal gear.

In addition, people generally forget to world build in 'non-mainstream' materials, nickle, aluminium, uranium, layered mafic intrusions, ion adsorption clay deposits. Some settings remember Tin is a thing at times but then forget the other half of griesen deposits.

Then there is the usual fantasy trope of more 'naturally pure' metals, gold, silver get their magic properties due to real world history, superstition among other things.

Theres then factors like in cultivation novels and some magic settings where 'single material' weapons channel whatever misc energy is vital to the setting better, where alloys are more 'impure' and harder to deal with due to less consistent 'matter' or any number of reasons.

After that point, the amount of people who even consider alloys like cupronickle, solder, electrum, pewter, babbitt metals, stellite is minimal.
The moment you miss vital metals for any of those alloys, a large part of technological development goes out the window. The cost to research good alloy ratios can take a long time if you are doing guesswork with any number of materials, added chaos if magic alters material grades or any number of things, including transmutation and alchemy.

Most authors don’t have specialized knowledge in complex metallurgy, so worldbuilding often omits details about essential alloys and resources, leading to oversimplified tech development. Even if you can name what half of the alloys I listed are made from, most people here would be unable to list where they collect geologically, how to find and harvest the materials or what half of the ores you dig up would be combinations of.

Spoiler: The difficulty of technological development in worldbuilding, unification, culture and development.

Lets pretend we somehow get past that worldbuilding where even in the real world we stalled for a LONG time in the iron age (Up to 1,000 years) due to the complexity and unreliability of steel production and you add guns to your story, great.

Accessing swamps and other coal-rich areas generally implies wildlife that isn't beyond unreasonable to kill due to the setting, magic or other influences, not to mention magical climates, seasonal events and otherwise, the 'strong get stronger' of the age the novel is set in, with the people in power, literally having power without needing to control major industries and production like food, which is a major component of how monarchies held power for extended periods of time.

The agricultural revolution would be needed first, the printing press would come before that, so you'd need a large religious force, maybe a plague or two to knock out a bunch of the population, and then a society that isn't focused on 'living gods' to research and advance their knowledge. There wouldn't be any trade with places that set up paper mills in most settings, there wouldn't be adaptation of paper making methods, movable type would need to be designed, the language would need to have a reasonable amount of characters to not get completely caught up in complexity.

You wouldn't just need guilds for production but intellectual property rights and the development of goldsmithing, which would require it to not be a strategic resource due to magic or any number of other reasons. Then you have special inks, economic shifts and a variety of things causing mass literacy beyond the basics.

Oh and don't forget you'd need a Britain-adjacent superpower in your setting, without the British colonising most of the world at one point in time, standardizing information within the entire empire, facilitating better trade routes, exchanges of ideas and innovation, you wouldn't get half of what you have today. It was the empire who spread the printing press, who started postal systems, who pushed a lot of legal and educational systems among scientific societies using their naval dominance and global security, allowing consistent information and practices for an extended period of time.

Then censuses, detailed maps, population records and then eventual decentralization among many MANY reasons.

If you have all that figured out, you would be in the 18th century within your world, coming up on the 19th century equivalent, full textiles, iron production, steam power, mechanization and then leading into electricity, steel, chemical industries, telephones, internal combustion, railways.

At that point you are phasing out horses in military and replacing it with a lot more 'advanced' warfare; of which usually could have been done with a random level 1 D&D mage using catapult on a magic stone cantrip for similar results against non-hero characters.

Spoiler: Genre conventions, limitations and audience expectations.

To address the other half of the issue, setting, stagnant racial archetypes because people copy what they know without innovating, or lacking the ability to, they are archetypes and stereotypes for a reason. What point is there having elves in your setting if you don't plan something to do with nature, why do you need dwarves if they aren't going to do something with them, usually allowing them to hit steampunk at maximum for no reason beyond 'dwarves make stuff'. Cultural inertia can be an issue but tends to be an inherited issue from when anyone picks one of those races for a story. You might as well ask why goblins and orcs are the 'demons' or 'enemies' most of the time in settings, because that is their role. It takes a lot less energy to say "I have dwarves in my setting" than it would be for someone to come around and express "The race called Jual within my setting share some traits with dwarves but work differently" even if I've directly got a race, culture and otherwise for them, the shortcut explanation simplifies it for the reader.

If you want bonus points, you can divorce the fantasy setting from medieval but then you have to sacrifice numerous elements of culture, religion, heroic imagery and myth. Moving beyond the default setting in itself can impact how the story is told, especially in a magic setting, very few authors can manage hard magiscience well without just saying, "This rune inscription heats the water in the pot because it contains the words 'fire' and 'warmth.' "

In Tanya the Evil, magic is used to augment and replace technology to seem different, allowing for industrial-style warfare without modern tech but functionally the purpose and capabilities are roughly the same as if you had series with dogfights in actual planes. Does giving a pikemen squad some plasma guns suddenly justify the gap of tech? Do you need grenades if a fireball does the same thing?

If you wanted Rule of Cool, then ignore all of the above, because cool doesn't need much thinking for it. Go for whatever you want in your writing, your world, your fun. (Assuming it isn't a fanfiction, in which case, not your world, possibly still your fun.)

 

[Gray_Mann]

The point is... PLEASE GIB THE RENAISSANCE AND ENLIGHTENMENT AGE A CHANCE!

The Council of Medieval Era Appreciationists have heard your complaints. We've gathered together to discuss the issue, and after much dialogue between ourselves, we came to this unanimous conclusion: Nope.

That will be all for now.

 

[Seaspecter]

To be fair a world stuck in the Medieval era is far less of a stretch than the inclusion of elves, dwarves, and dragons.

 

[TheIcMan]

I want a goddamn Industrial Revolution age fantasy. Or basically steampunk fantasy lmao

Arcane filled that void a bit